Stimulating Passion
Since, I first started piano lessons with my teacher, Mrs Margaret Polomski, I started to notice her mentioning, just every now and then, something like, "yes, that's really bringing out the purple in the piece", or even something more simple such as, "lovely, but make it more warm". I was deeply fascinated by her seemingly direct contact with the notes and their colours and she would patiently describe specifically and consistently the colour that a certain chord meant for her.
For me personally, I am not a synaesthete in the true sense of the word, but I believe I can sympathise in that I feel the tone of the notes and the different chords. I can get a feeling of a more golden, warm or earthy tone but not so much an obvious colour. My music teacher, Miss Ellena Papas, shares a similar but much more developed relationship with music which can be seen in her song, "Yours I Am, O Lord". This particular song was written for the Carmalite Nuns of Ormiston to celebrate the birth of Saint Teresa and was written in the key of C major with modulations to E flat major. These keys were chosen since C major is a very pure, white tone while E flat major is very much a shimmering, golden tone. Modulating from C major to E flat major is creates a beautiful blossoming moment and is another example of how synaesthetic influence can be used to make beautiful and interesting compositions.
Below, is a multi-track recording of my singing "Yours I Am, O Lord":
I also decided to try composing a piece whilst consciously using synaesthetic colour-associations to portray a certain themes. I wrote a short 16-bar piece called "American Flag". I chose to write about America's flag because it provides interesting visuals for me to portray. In my case, the red and white stripes were represented respectively by G major and C major, while the blue square in the top left-hand corner was represented through D major since these are the particular tones that I associate.
Below, is the exported audio of my composition for piano and a brief analysis underneath that.
“Anissa likes classical music as opposed to country or rock because it is more colourful to her due to the complex mix of instrumental timbres.”
- Svard, L (2013)
As demonstrated above, I am an example of how synaesthesia, or the knowledge of, can be utilised to stimulate artistic passion. I find the whole concept incredibly fascinating, in listening to music but especially in composition.
Synaesthesia, and chromesthesia in particular, seems to give several advantages in composition because it allows for “unusual, yet electrifying tonalities” (The University of North Carolina 2014) that work in original and unpredictable ways. And if something goes bad while you’re composing, simply looking at the work could potentially provide a helpful warning of clashing colours.
While not all pieces are composed around bold colour schemes, there is certainly colour to find in every work since, after all, music is an art. With all of the creative aspects so intricately woven together, synaesthesia has long been linked to creativity (Massy-Beresford, H 2014) especially since there are connections not only between “seemingly unrelated sensations”, but also between “seemingly unrelated ideas” (Choi, C 2011). Really, with these qualities it’s hard not to be creative!
As Carol Steen said (Dombal, R 2014), “if you were surrounded by colour all your life, and it really thrilled you, wouldn’t you want more of it?” And this is why synaesthetes are seven times more common in the arts careers that in the rest of the population (Massy-Beresford, H 2014; Higgins-Devine, K 2015) – because all forms of synaesthesia are beautiful, creative, passionate and artistically stimulating.
Below: "The four paintings below were made by Carol [Steen] to capture the colours and images she experiences when she hears sounds, reads words or even when having acupuncture." (Higgins-Devine, K 2015)
Please click on the gallery below to expand...
